3/29/2007

After Terry Jeffrey called Hillary Clinton's Iraq position "completely incoherent" on Hardball yesterday, Chris Matthews slammed him and other traditional conservatives, calling their views even more incoherent because they've gotten stuck supporting and defending a war they otherwise wouldn't have.

JEFFREY: Hillary‘s position is completely incoherent for a number of reasons.

MATTHEWS: You know what is more incoherent? The views of people like you and other traditional conservatives, who never liked this war, but went along with it because the leader, Bush, supported it. You don‘t like this war, Terry. Pat doesn‘t like this war. Bill Buckley doesn‘t like this war. Traditional conservatives don‘t like this war. And yet you went along with it. If this was Clinton‘s war, you wouldn‘t have fought it.

This is a rare instance when the Clinton comparison actually proves something. There's simply no way in hell this country's most prominent war cheerleaders would support the war if Clinton was waging it. Glenn Greenwald compiled an extensive list of GOP pooh-poohing of Clinton's foreign policy and it ain't pretty.

Usually, when someone brings up Bill Clinton, it's a right-wing moron trying to justify something this administration has done - or just trying to throw a red herring into the conversation. I've seen it a lot, even in mindless, disjointed, rambling, baseless, jabbering letters to the editor. This time, it's actually accurate - the Congressional Republicans during the Somalia conflict wanted to cut and run, and Clinton and a few supporters wanted to stay. (The exception to this, from what Glenn's posts tell me, is Sen. Feingold, who wanted us out in both of these cases. Consistency is actually important to some people in Congress - who knew?)

Now the Republicans, many of them still in Congress, want our troops to stay in a place where more people are being killed for far less, and anyone saying we should leave is being painted as an unpatriotic terrorist. Worse yet, they're trying to counter the will of both the Congress and the people by saying that Congress has no power to control the progress of military action, despite doing just that while Clinton was president.

I'd wager none but a few (like Matthews) in the so-called "liberal media" are even willing to bring up this flip-flopping. And I'd wager even more than the few who do dare to bring it up will be smeared.